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By Kristen SchweizerBloomberg News • Monday October 1, 2012 7:17 AM

The
Desperate Housewives of Wisteria Lane have a new address: Istanbul’s Gul Street. In
Russia, Peg and Al Bundy of
Married ... With Children have morphed into Gena and Dasha, who inhabit an apartment in
Yekaterinburg rather than a suburban home near Chicago.

For decades, American situation comedies and dramas dubbed into other languages have been
standard fare on TV screens worldwide. Today, broadcasters in Turkey, Russia and elsewhere instead
are padding their prime-time schedules with locally produced versions of shows licensed from U.S.
studios.

The Istanbul housewives — named Yasemin, Nermin, Elif, Zelis and Emel and known as
Desperate Women — star in the eighth-most-watched series on Turkish TV courtesy of Walt
Disney Co., which owns global rights to the show. Sony has remade
Married ... With Children a dozen times for international markets.

“Right now, we see that, in the Middle East, the TV world has an exploding appetite for
everything,” said Andrea Wong, president of international production at Sony Pictures Television. “
Turkey is a key market, and Israel is being explored, as is India.”

Reality- and game-show concepts have been sold in multiple markets for many years — think
Survivor or
Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Now, media companies say, increased availability of free
and paid channels in emerging markets have spawned a growing appetite for localized versions of
American TV shows.

Media companies say the shows appeal to audiences who don’t want to watch dubbed or subtitled
programs, and in conservative cultures plot lines can be adjusted to avoid offending social
mores.

“We have high hopes for this side of the business and continue to work with our local
broadcasters in order to engage large local audiences,” said Michael Edelstein, president of
international TV production for NBC Universal, which has adapted
Law & Order in Russia.

Turkey’s
Desperate Women, now in its second season, was licensed by Disney to Dubai’s MBC Group, a
free-to-air satellite company covering the Middle East.

Once a format is sold to a particular country, the reformatted script and production are almost
always overseen by a representative of the U.S. companies.

“We will have a consultant on each show who spends a fair amount of time in that territory,”
said Andrew Zein, senior vice president of creative format development and sales at Warner Bros.
International TV Production.

Warner Bros.’s Chinese version of
Gossip Girl, called
V Girl, will premiere in the second quarter of next year, Zein said. Russia, which Zein
calls a “significant market with an appetite for scripted format,” will see the
Without a Trace series air this year.

More-conservative markets such as the Middle East may require alterations. Sony says the Arabic
version of
Every-body Loves Raymond eliminated a scene in which the couple were in bed.

TV executives in China requested their adaptation of the high-school musical show
Glee show the actors in college, said Yoni Cohen, senior vice president for development
and sales at 20th Century Fox.
Glee, one of the top-rated shows in the U.S., could prove problematic in some markets as
the show has openly gay actors and discusses teen sex and teen pregnancy, he said.

“We try very hard not to let other cultures dictate,” Cohen said. “And we’d rather not do a show
in the end if it steps beyond an adaptation and into a reinvention.”